“I went to an all girls, catholic private school. Everyone was competing.”

“There was always a bit more pressure to be the more dolled up girl and look the best.”Rhianna

“I went to an all girls, catholic private school. There was always a bit more pressure to be the more dolled up girl and look the best. Every was always competing; who had the shortest skirt, and all that. I first got introduced to makeup as a teenager, as I feel most people are. Starting high school all the girls were wearing it. I never really wanted to, because I like sleeping in too much. Then, as the years went on -as I got to probably year ten or so- I started to feel the pressure. I started to experiment a little with it. I never really overly interested in it. I felt like I was just doing it because everyone else was. Which, realistically, I was.
I have a disorder called trichotillomania. When I get stressed or anxious, my body’s first reaction is to pull my hair out. It’s similar to someone who gets stressed and nail-bites; I don’t necessarily always realize that I’m doing it. Even when I do realize, I can’t necessarily always stop myself. I just keep going. A lot of the time I look down and my bed, or the floor around me, or a desk is just covered in hair. It’s always a bit disheartening and terrifying. I have photos documenting from when I was around eleven years old of having bald patches throughout my scalp. It was stressful, especially growing up in high school, to try to cover up bald patches. As a fifteen, sixteen year old it wasn’t always easy to explain. I hadn’t been diagnosed. I didn’t get diagnosed until I hit eighteen. Even now there’s not much known about it. There’s no cure. It’s like a ‘deal with it, see how you go’ sort of thing. You learn to deal with it.
In the first two hours of a shift I had at a previous job I had four people make a comment about my height. It was a four hour shift, and by the end of the night I was just so done. It gets old. People keep mentioning, ‘oh, you’re short!’ and I think, ‘yeah, oh, really? I never knew!’. There are a lot of comments, a lot of sarcasm. People think they have a lot of really original short jokes. And it’s not always the case.”

Real conversations with real women about the impact makeup has on their lives.